Ho-Hum Week for Flows Activity

Equity markets were fairly flat for the fund-flows week ended Wednesday, May 18. The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished the week down 185 points (-1.05%). For the week equity exchange-traded fund (ETF) authorized participants pulled $1.7 billion net from ETFs. They added $942 million net to SPDR S&P 500 (SPY) while removing $1.2 billion from iShares MSCI Emerging Markets (EEM) and $1.9 billion from iShares Russell 2000 (IWM). Equity mutual fund investors pulled $2.2 billion net from their funds and brought the year-to-date equity mutual fund net outflows to $30.4 billion.

Taxable bond mutual funds collected $2.1 billion of net inflows, of which high-yield mutual funds saw net inflows of $203 million and high-yield ETFs took in $931 million. Bond ETFs gathered $2.8 billion of net inflows. The week’s biggest individual bond ETF net inflows belonged to iShares iBoxx $HY Corporate (HYG, +$937 million).

Municipal bond mutual fund investors added another $1.0 billion net this past week, for the first consecutive billion-dollar-week streak since January 2013. Money market funds saw net inflows of $10.7 billion for the week. Institutions added a net $8.5 billion, while retail added $2.2 billion.